Talk:Medina quarter

Sources for future article expansion

More on medinas:

• The Medina and the Islamic City: Colonial Terms and Postcolonial Legacies
• A tale of five cities
• Rent Traditional Houses, Royal Suites & Small Palaces in the Medieval Souks of Fez, Morocco

lots more to write about this :) Sbwoodside 23:30, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Pop culture

Wasn't there a song about a medina? I feel like there should be a "Medinas in Popular Culture" section. It was one of the main reasons I looked this up, that half-remembered song, but I'm glad I did because now I want to go visit these places. They sound interesting. 68.224.178.2 15:04, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Notes on revisions

I've added some rough content to the article to try and set it up for further development, as there is actually quite a lot of academic literature relevant to this topic. In particular, I've added some historical context to why "medinas" exist as a separate districts in much of North Africa, as this is part of what makes this topic distinctive. It's largely in the context of French colonial rule in North Africa, which is where the term "medina" is used this way in French and English, but I suspect some things can be said about Tripoli (Libya) too, judging by some of the sources I saw. Many of the references I've cited contain much more information (or are found in edited volumes with more) that could be useful for expanding the article.

I've also removed some understandable but not very informative generic statements about what medinas are (narrow streets, car-free, etc), as this could be said of lots of pre-modern cities anywhere in the world and it's also not consistently true. There is, however, plenty of academic literature (as mentioned) that discusses medinas to some extent in general, their characteristics, and their issues (e.g. overcrowding, under-investment, tourism and gentrification, vulnerable heritage, etc), so some sourced information along these lines could be re-added in the future.

Lastly, I want note that, aside from the helpful list, I think editors should try to avoid turning the article into a miscellanea of trivia about individual medinas, as individual cities and medinas generally have their own articles which should be developed instead (e.g. Fes el Bali, Casbah of Algiers, Medina of Tunis, etc). R Prazeres (talk) 01:41, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Malta

@LlywelynII. This addition is a) unsourced, and b) irrelevant to the topic here, which would be clear if you read the article. It has been added before, I removed it then for the same reasons.

I see that you were improving the Mdina article before this, and it seems that some of the old (unsourced) information there needs to be updated as well to perhaps avoid this confusion in the future. R Prazeres (talk) 06:05, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

@R Prazeres: Given that Mdina is precisely the Arab fortified old town of Rabat, Malta, in what way isn't it a quintessential example of a medina? Is it just gatekeeping over the idea it has to be North African and Malta no longer counts? or are there some other legitimate criteria that are currently missing from the lead section?

Re:WP:RS, yeah, fair enough. Thing is, though, it's trivially easy to source a connection between Mdina and medina and nearly as easy to show it's a fortified old town &c. Obviously you feel very strongly on the issue, so... y'know... what's the actual issue here? — LlywelynII 06:09, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

PS: Sorry, it seems I was writing this while you wrote your comment above. R Prazeres (talk) 06:07, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

Yep, no worries. [Apologies for moving your text around. I think this flows better and there were no substantive changes. Feel free to edit or reply wherever.] — LlywelynII 06:09, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, thanks for reorganizing. If helpful to your question above, some further clarification:

The Arabic word "medina" just means "city" in general. The name Mdina in Malta merely comes from that word (just like Medina in Saudi Arabia), it does not mean a "walled city" specifically (though I don't know if it has taken on that meaning separately in Maltese). In North Africa, the word has a more specific meaning in French and English that comes from its colonial urban history, when the French used the Arabic word "medina" to refer to the historic "Arab" cities as opposed to the new cities they built (a similar thing happened with the name "Casbah" in Algiers, originally referring to the qasaba or citadel). That term has since stuck around in this context (even in local Arabic this narrower meaning can be used), but this particular meaning is not generalized outside North Africa (possibly with exceptions, but more sources needed for that). So the example of Malta is outside the scope here; it's just an etymological coincidence.

As I noted in the previous talk section above, this article as a whole still needs further improvement to make all this clearer, and to cover other useful information. It's just a matter of more work. If I have chance, I'll try to improve the relevant material at Mdina to clarify the etymology there. R Prazeres (talk) 06:40, 7 April 2024 (UTC)